This book constructs an anthropological history of a subaltern religious formation, Mahima Dharma of Orissa, a large province in eastern India. Tracking the contingent making of a critical community over a hundred and forty year period, ‘Religion, Law and Power’ explores the interplay of distinct expressions of time and history, innovative reformulations of caste and Hinduism and distinct engagements with state and nation. This serves to unravel the wider entanglements of religion, history, law, modernity and power.

This is a study of religion, politics, and society in a period of great significance in modern Irish history. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the consolidation of the power of the Protestant landed class, the enactment of penal laws against Catholics, and constitutional conflicts that forced Irish Protestants to redefine their ideas of national identity. S. J. Connolly's scholarly and wide-ranging study examines these developments and sets them in their historical context. The Ireland that emerges from his lucid and penetrating analysis was essentially a part of ancien r--eacute--;gime Europe: a pre-industrialized society, in which social order depended less on a ramshackle apparatus of coercion than on complex structures of deference and mutual accommodation, along with the absence of credible challengers to the dominance of a landed --eacute--;lite; in which the ties of patronage and clientship were often more important than horizontal bonds of shared economic or social position; and in which religion remained a central part of personal and political motivation. - ;Abbreviations; Introduction; I. A NEW IRELAND; 1. December 1659: `A Nation Born in a Day'; 2. Settlement and Explanation; 3. A Foreign Jurisdiction; 4. Papists and Fanatics; 5. Counter-Revolution Defeated; II. AN ELITE AND ITS WORLD; 6. Uneven Development; 7. Gentlement and Others; 8. Manners; III. THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICS; 9. A Company of Madmen: The Politics of Party 1691-1714; 10. `Little Employments...Smiles, Good Dinners'; 11. Politics and the People; IV. RELATIONSHIPS; 12. Kingdoms; 13. Nations; 14. Communities; 15. Orders; V. THE INVENTIONS OF MEN IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD: RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES; 16. Numbers; 17. Catholics; 18. Dissenters; 19. Churchmen; 20. Christians; VI. LAW AND THE MAINTENANCE OF ORDER; 21. Resources; 22. The Limits of Order; 23. The Rule of Law; 24. Views from Below: Disaffection and the Threat of Rebellion; 25; Views from Above: Perceptions of the Catholic Threat; VII. `REASONABLE INCONVENIENCES: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE PENAL LAWS'; 26. `Raw Head and Bloody Bones': Parliamentary Management and Penal Legislation; 27. Debate; 28. The Conversion of the Natives; 29. Protestant Ascendancy? The Consequences of the Penal Laws; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index. -

In this book Ira Lupu and Robert Tuttle break through the unproductive American debate over competing religious rights. They present an original theory that makes the secular character of the American government, rather than a set of individual rights, the centerpiece of religious liberty in the United States. Through a comprehensive treatment of relevant constitutional themes and through their attention to both historical concerns and contemporary controversies — including issues often in the news — Lupu and Tuttle define and defend the secular character of U.S. government.

This book explores the critical role of law in protecting - and protecting against - religious beliefs in American health care.

Prevailing stories about law and religion place great faith in the capacity of legal multiculturalism, rights-based toleration, and conceptions of the secular to manage issues raised by religious difference. Yet the relationship between law and religion consistently proves more fraught than such accounts suggest. In Law’s Religion, Benjamin L. Berger knocks law from its perch above culture, arguing that liberal constitutionalism is an aspect of, not an answer to, the challenges of cultural pluralism. Berger urges an approach to the study of law and religion that focuses on the experience of law as a potent cultural force. Based on a close reading of Canadian jurisprudence, but relevant to all liberal legal orders, this book explores the nature and limits of legal tolerance and shows how constitutional law’s understanding of religion shapes religious freedom. Rather than calling for legal reform, Law’s Religion invites us to rethink the ethics, virtues, and practices of adjudication in matters of religious difference.

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion draws on the expertise of an international team of scholars providing both an entry point into the sociological study and understanding of religion and an in-depth survey into its changing forms and content in the contemporary world. The role and impact of religion and spirituality on the politics, culture, education and health in the modern world is rigorously discussed and debated. The study of the sociology of religion forges interdisciplinary links to explore aspects of continuity and change in the contemporary interface between society and religion. Using a combination of theoretical, methodological and content-led approaches, the fifty-seven contributors collectively emphasise the complex relationships between religion and aspects of life from scientific research to law, ecology to art, music to cognitive science, crime to institutional health care and more. The developing character of religion, irreligion and atheism and the impact of religious diversity on social cohesion are explored. An overview of current scholarship in the field is provided in each themed chapter with an emphasis on encouraging new thinking and reflection on familiar and emergent themes to stimulate further debate and scholarship. The resulting essay collection provides an invaluable resource for research and teaching in this diverse discipline.

Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.